Entanglement
by carpetfibers
Summary: "Dumbledore would never have approved of sacrificing a child, but to Hermione Granger, the loss was less murder than it was suicide. Better the world lose a single child- better the world lose her- than it lose itself." [SB x HG][RL X HG]
1. Prologue

_Disclaimer: Standard wording applies; all glory be to JKR._

 _A/N: I've been working on this story for a little over a year now and as I near the end of it, I decided to go ahead and publish the prologue. I suppose it's a rite of passage for any HP fanfic writer to do a time travel fic, but I had resisted for over a decade until I was struck with this idea on one of my commutes home. I have a long ride twice a day- an hour each way- and it was on one of those drives that this came to be. I hope you enjoy the preview; the full story should begin being published around mid-February._

 _Trigger warnings for descriptions similar to self-harm in the below; this is rather darker than what I typically do._

* * *

 **Entanglement**

 **Prologue**

 **The Sacrifice**

* * *

 **1998 March 11**

She remembered glass and an outstretched hand, the shock of red hair and desperate fingers; a voice shouting her name and brilliant pain scoring through her blood and into her mind. A body tackled her to the hard marbled floor, arms heavy around her waist. There was pain and darkness, and she knew she was falling, the air cold and brittle, and the ground, as it met her, was softened by the warmth of another.

She saw dark hair and felt heat on her cheek, and when Hermione next awoke, it was to sun on her skin, cool earth under hand, and Harry's shuddering gasps.

It was morning still when Harry died, his blood too thin to clot, the curse too heavy with dark magic to cleanse. He sputtered and shook, his lips moving but voiceless. She felt little of the throbbing from the dripping letters on her forearm; she noticed nothing of the tremors that left her hands shaking and spine aching. Harry's eyes grew wide and unseeing as something darker and colder than death overcame him. The scream that followed his last breath, the shriek of rage and wrath and boiling pain, informed of a worse truth.

Her first true friend, the part of her heart that she allowed a piece of her soul, had been a horcrux.

It took almost two more months of living off of stolen scraps from Muggle kitchens, of sleeping under tarps magicked with warmth and _ignore-me-please_ spells, and of dodging the Snatchers, their hunting hounds, the Cŵn Annwn, howling at her heels and promising her death, before she came to her decision.

 _Potterwatch_ had ceased its broadcasts two weeks earlier, the last message an entreaty to all above and below to leave- to _run-_ to seek sanctuary with the MACUSA or escape far beyond the continent to where Voldemort's reach had yet to penetrate. She knew little of the Weasley twins' final hours, only that the next broadcast echoed of an intermittent cackling and feminine hiss of pleasure.

Three more months passed before the potion was readied. Her wrist ached for days after she finished with the required cutting, her blood darker than she had imagined and the pain a numbed throbbing that matched her heart beat. The potion was not the sort Dumbledore would have approved of; the ingredients had demanded sacrifice and hate, but she tempered its intent with thoughts of her friends and family.

Hermione could not turn off the love her heart had for those she wished to save, to bring back and return to her world, and in the end, the potion was different from what the coverless book promised. She carried it around her neck, its small mouthful of promise protected in an impervious vial, and like the locket, it whispered to her visions of an alternative future and changeable past.

She heard the howls of the Cŵn Annwn as they neared, heard the pounding of their spectral paws along the ground, and her arrival in the sacred grove, the blessed trees faint and white in the passing light of twilight, was more stumble than step. She cut into her skin a second time, her fingers trembling as she pressed her bloodied palms along the trunks of the trees.

Her blue flames ate at the wood, purifying her offering and leaving burnt etchings of her runes in their wake.

The hounds circled the grove, their wizarding counterparts not far behind, and Hermione knew that her moments were now but seconds. She fell to the grove's center, her knees holding enough strength to grant her a kneel. In her memory she found her earliest thought, her earliest piece of happiness and love. She saw her parents, young then, and unhampered by a daughter gifted with things too wondrous and awful to behold; she saw her parents embracing in the daylight, their bodies dancing to a forgotten tune from the radio. She saw herself at their feet, fingers raised skyward.

She closed her eyes and lifted the vial to her mouth. Her lips whispered the incantation, and in mirror copy of her six-year-old self, she too reached toward the sun.

"Take me back," she begged. "Let me fix it."

The melody grew louder, and the dampness from her wrist grew heavier. The hounds, in their dark hunt, howled and snapped, and distantly the shouts of the Snatchers caught her ears.

But the song was stronger; her spell held. The potion, deep within her now, pulsed, and expanded until there was only a brilliant light, enveloping all.

The air stilled, and the trees silenced. The hounds whimpered as even the stars dimmed in a stammering of power and chasmal change. Their masters cowered in a sudden nameless terror. In the vacuum of existence, a piercing cry broke into the stutter.

A small child materialized from the grove's center, no more than six, her brown hair thick and unkempt, and her dark eyes frightened and pained.

Dumbledore would never have approved of sacrificing a child, but to Hermione Granger, the loss was less murder than it was suicide. Better the world lose a single child- better the world lose _her_ \- than it lose itself.

A life for a life, the spell demanded; she had only the will to offer her own.

* * *

 **1986 January 27**

Remus Lupin could remember, once a long, long time ago, thinking that perhaps one day he would get used to the pain. He would hope, in the first moments of ripping and splitting, of his bones snapping and re-shaping and his body contorting into a monstrous mockery of his form, that there would be a future in which his mind would no longer feel the horror of the change. He had never hoped for a cure- he was never so foolish as that- but to reach a point in which perhaps he might become used to it.

A point in which perhaps he might accept it, even.

Being a lycanthrope.

Being a monster.

It had been years since he last visited that hope, and in the early morning hours after his body had returned to itself, he felt grim satisfaction that he had done away with such thoughts and pinings long ago.

What he could not change-

What he could not control-

There was only the pain, and as long as he could keep that pain to himself- as long as he could go without infecting another, or hurting another, then that was achievement enough.

Remus stretched carefully, feeling the alien movement of his human bones beneath his human flesh, and reminded himself that these sensations- this skin and muscle and tendon- were normal and real. The wolf part of his mind was slow to fade, and it rejected the weakness of its host. He closed his eyes and recalled the feel of his arms, the pull of his legs; he traced over the span of his stomach and the dusting of hair along his chest. He lifted weak fingers to his lips, dry and frowning, and winced as he reached his cheeks.

He dedicated an hour to the effort of rising from the stone cellar floor and removing the iron restraints that kept him bound during the long night. Another twenty minutes went to the aching, slow ascent to the main floor of the worn-down cottage that had been his home for the past four months. He'd recovered enough to fully bend his knees by the time he reached the tiny bathroom and its silently disapproving mirror.

The mirror wordlessly hissed its dissatisfaction with his reflection which now displayed three new wounds along his cheek. The marks stung at the touch, the skin red and blistered. He'd have to think of some sort of explanation for the scratches by Thursday morning, his next scheduled shift at the sundries store.

He'd just reached for the shower when a faint knock interrupted. Remus paused as a second and then third followed, the sounds stronger than the first attempt. After a few seconds of silence, the knocking began again. In no shape to face a visitor, he shuffled carefully back to the main room.

The knocking persisted, and he finally gave in, wrapping his torn cloak over his shoulders and palming his wand. He meant the door to only open the small space for a quick sending off, but the change had left him weak and slow. The unknown woman had his wand in her hand, and her foot through his doorway within seconds.

A binding hex trapped him to the floor, and Remus stared up at his assailant in complete surprise.

She stood unsteadily above him, her eyes unfocused and her wand hand trembling from effort. A darkly stained bandage did little to stem the regular drip of what he immediately recognized as blood from her wrist.

"Who are you?" he asked, an inexplicable concern filling him for the young stranger.

Her lips twitched briefly, something of a smile flittering for a moment. Her eyes met his and tears filled them as she spent several long seconds tracing over his features. 'I missed you, Remus Lupin," she whispered hoarsely.

He frowned, bemused; he had absolutely no memory of this strange girl. "How do you know my name?"

"Remus John Lupin, son to Lyall and Hope Lupin. Bitten at the age of four, you've just finished dealing with a full moon. You've a weakness for chocolate, are terrible at Gobstones, and hate your Patronus. You've been in semi-hiding since Voldemort killed your best friend and his wife, and you think your other best friend the man who betrayed them both."

His confusion grew with her every word, a slow fear growing behind them. Who was this girl- and how could she possibly know so much about him? "Who are you?" he repeated, his voice stronger now.

She wobbled as she lowered to his side; he felt a flicker of control return to his hands. "I've come very far, but I can't do this on my own. I'll need your help."

She tipped forward, careening into his still-bound body and dropping the wands in her fall. The spell broke, and Remus reached to catch her. He searched her face, dirtied and pale, and saw nothing there to explain her familiarity or words.

With her eyes barely held open and her fingers trembling, she clutched at his cloak. "Please, professor, we have to save them. Harry will die-"

"Harry? Harry Potter?" Remus leaned forward, drawing her closer. Her trembling increased, and a thin sheen of sweat stretched across her forehead. She needed healing, but first- he had to hear. "Tell me- what's this about Harry?"

Her lips barely moved and her breath grew heavy. "- the horcuxes. Sirius-"

She fainted, completely worn, and Remus spent far too long staring down at her still form, shock rendering him immobile. His own fatigue returned, and he felt a deep stirring- a heavy rippling- strum through him. Something inexplicable had shifted with her words, and he felt the world move it.

The uncontrollable had been changed, and this unknown girl had done it.

* * *

 **The Sacrifice**

 **Prologue**

 **Entanglement**

* * *

 _A/N: I only realized in writing Entanglement that I had completely adopted the movie-canon scar as full canon; I suppose if I'm writing an AU, it's okay to play fast and loose with the two 'verses._


	2. The Diary and the Locket: Part One

**Entanglement**

 _ **by: carpetfibers**_

 **The Diary and Locket**

 **Part One**

* * *

 **I**

* * *

The softness beneath her felt foreign, and it was the warmth and comfort that she awoke to that first alerted her to the change in her circumstances. Hermione fought the heaviness of her dreams, misshapen flashes of her parents' horrified expressions and the dark stain of her blood along their floor; she struggled into consciousness. Someone had draped a thick wool blanket over her, and in its woodsy scent, she caught hints of Grimmauld and its library.

Slowly, her memories returned to her.

The Snatchers and their hounds-

The sacred grove-

Her mother's muted cry-

And her professor-

Hermione pushed the blanket aside and lifted her weight up from the bed, noting the metal restraint on her left wrist and the clean bandage on her right. The room was simple and plain, unadorned but for a square, wooden dresser to her right and a chipped rocker in the far corner. The door, left open, gave glimpse of the hall she had broken into earlier and a tiny kitchenette.

Lupin entered, his wand at his waist, and a bowl of something fragrant and steaming in his hands. He faltered at finding her awake, and Hermione stared into a face she both knew and yet didn't. The sandy hair she remembered remained, but without its streaks of gray or shaggy length. The shortened strands, parted and disheveled, brought only vaguely recalled hazel eyes into stark relief. The lines and creases of his forehead and cheeks were smoothed away by a youth she had never known from him; three fresh scratches interrupted his cheek, red and new and quite different from the pale, ghosted lines in her memory. His expression, though- that she found unchanged.

Perhaps she had been too young to have recognized it for what it was on that first meeting on the Hogwarts Express, all those years before, but she had a proper name for it now.

Remus Lupin at twenty-six was just as lonely and weary as he would be at thirty-three.

"You're awake," he commented mildly. His gaze lingered on her features, and Hermione suddenly became aware of what she must look like. She broke away from his eyes, intent on the bandage on her wrist instead.

Lupin placed the bowl carefully beside her on the dresser and then took a seat in the rocking chair. He withdrew his wand, with slow but deliberate movements, and balanced it in his palm. "I took the liberty of securing your wand. I'm sure you understand why."

Hermione nodded dizzily, overcome by the delicious aroma the bowl and its stew sent her way. He followed the path of her attention and gestured with his free hand. "Please, eat. It's for you."

"Thank you-" she managed, the politeness barely held by years of well-trained manners, and then all but inhaled the stew. She thought briefly of Ron and how he had treated every meal much as she did now, and pain so much sharper than the dulled throbbing in her wrist twisted in her breast. She swallowed down the sob with her meal and only just resisted turning the bowl to scrape it clean with her tongue.

Hermione lifted her eyes in time to catch the expression of pity leveled at her, and embarrassment coated her cheeks. With far more reserved movements, she replaced the bowl. "Thank you, Professor."

"You called me that before- Professor… which is confusing, because to the best of my recollection I've never been a teacher, which would certainly preclude having had a student." Lupin leaned forward, his long fingers stretched over his knees. He continued when she remained silent. "You know details about me and my life that only a very few would know, and yet, I have no memory of you. I've spent the day considering it, and the possibilities are each more unlikely than the last."

"I-" Hermione tried to meet her former professor's eyes, but the strangeness of his change was too much to reconcile. A blurry-double vision met her with each attempt, and she instead turned to her hands, to the neatly wrapped bandage that cloaked her wrist and her dirty fingernails. "I don't know exactly where to begin."

"Start with how you know my name," he suggested, and with a slow breath, she did just that.

She spoke of that first meeting on the train, of his tattered traveling cloak and scarred cheeks. She described the chill of the dementors and the warmth of his chocolate. She told him of his lessons and encouragement, of the nightly fear of Sirius Black's escape, and how, under the rise of a full moon, the truth of the murder at Godric's Hollow finally came to light.

Hermione spoke until her throat ran hoarse, and when she finally stopped, her breath short and lips dry, Lupin's cheeks were wet with spent tears. Loathing lined his features, deep-set with guilt and overwhelming relief. He stepped toward her, as if to touch her, but stopped short, his hands trembling in the air between them.

"I always knew it couldn't be true, that Sirius would never betray us, but the evidence was too damning, and even Dumbledore seemed sure of it. All these years, I had thought myself a traitor, too, to still doubt it. But James and Lily were dead, and he their secret-keeper…" Lupin staggered to his knees, falling before her, his head bowed.

"You can't blame yourself. Even Sirius admitted to his guilt, for all that he meant otherwise. How were you to know of any of it? You were on your missions with the-"

"Who are you?" Lupin interrupted her attempt to comfort him, his voice a mix of wonderment and fear. His gaze searched over her, his eyes intense. "Are you a Seer?"

"It was a very old spell I used, and not particularly Light, but it brought me to this time, from the future." She turned her wrist to show the bandaged wound. "It all went wrong, but we can fix it. We can give ourselves a chance- give Harry a chance."

"Horcruxes." The word hung between them, filling the air, and turning their breath cold.

"There are five to destroy. Will you help me?"

There was no pause before his answer; the iron band binding her to the bed unsnapped in time with his reply. "Yes."

* * *

 **II**

* * *

Hermione closed the door of the small toilette with a silent breath. After returning her wand to her and insisting on a second bowl of the simple but delicious stew, Lupin had spent nearly two hours questioning her on each of the details surrounding the five horcruxes. She'd left him writing and organizing his notes on a long stretch of parchment to make use of the offered shower. The tiled room boasted little beyond a pedestal sink, beige toilet and tiny shower. A strangely silent mirror hung on the wall above the sink, and she blinked into it, barely recognizing the face reflected there.

Gaunt cheeks, far too hollow to be healthy, topped by sunken eyes stared piteously ahead; her once tanned skin, bronzed every summer by trips to the south of France and long swims in the cool waters of the Mediterranean, appeared grayish and stretched. Her lips had thinned in the months on the run, the skin chapped and marred by bloodied lines.

Hermione lifted trembling hands to her hair, the bane of her younger years and then later silent-vanity, that now hung matted and dirtied along her scalp. Unbidden, tears gathered and swelled, and she sniffed heavily, hating the weakness and stupidity of being driven to this by her ruined hair.

" _Who are you?" The woman's voice shaped the words, but a hint of suspicion, of impossible comprehension clouded the syllables. "What have you done with our daughter?"_

Hermione remembered little detail from the day before, the stark awfulness of her parents' house rushed past in her memory for the brief clarity she could recall of stumbling into the The Hag's Cure, a leaning aging inn on the outskirts of the wizarding village of Ilkley, and then exchanging coin with the curious, but unquestioning proprietor. She could recall curling into the floor with a blanket from the sagging bed and sleeping little.

She remembered a restless slumber, her mother's words replaying and her father's tears inescapable.

" _Please don't," the man pleaded. "I don't understand, but I think you'll regret it, so please-"_

Her arrival on Lupin's door step earlier that morning was her first piece of genuine coherence since the spell had brought her to 1986.

She washed her clothes first, peeling off the two layers of Weasley jumpers carefully, trying to preserve the ruined knits that had seen numerous mendings and darnings. Her corduroy trousers were stiff with grime, and her skin itched as she removed them. Three layers of socks, one pair of underwear patched with fraying stitches, and a once-white bra that appeared near-black in the dim light: she removed each piece carefully and then knelt on the tiled floor, alternating between cleansing spells and warm water, trying to wring one last use out of the clothing.

When Hermione finished with the clothes, she began on herself. While the mirror had shown a face marred by a near-year of deprivations, the rest of her slender body reflected ravages still. She could count her ribs with ease, and at least five more scars had joined the thick, crooked wound given her at the Department of Ministries. Her most recent injury, the cut along her wrist, was only newly healed, but she knew that too would leave a scar, as most magical injuries did.

Her leg muscles stretched painfully taut, and it took over thirty minutes in the warm water of the shower to work out the stiffness and force her feet into flatness. Her body seemed frozen on the edge of a sudden sprint, and she knew it would be a long time yet before it would know any other stance. Her hair, though, was the greater challenge. The bar of soap barely managed it, and she was forced to cut out a knotted chunk behind her left ear that showed no chance of possible rehabilitation.

When she was finally finished, Hermione stood once again in front of the square mirror and examined her reflection. She was still too pale, and her face far too thin, but the soap and water had returned something human to her. Her hair, although weighted down by the wet, already promised to curl and thicken, and with that small reminder of herself, she felt ready to begin the strange process of reacquainting herself with someone who was now effectively a stranger.

She found Lupin still at the table, on his third piece of parchment. She read over his shoulder while her fingers continued to work through her hair, unsnarling and loosening the damaged strands. He had grouped the five horcruxes into separate sections, with the easier collections listed first, and the more difficult ones toward the end.

Beneath the section for Slytherin's locket and the diary was written _Sirius Black_ , the name underlined twice. A bold question mark followed along with several blot marks that signified attempts to answer the unwritten question: How to break Sirius out of Azkaban?

During those long weeks leading up to the ritual, Hermione had considered the finer details of her plan over and over. Much like the conclusion Lupin had drawn, getting into the Malfoy estate would require someone who shared the family's blood. Additionally, Grimmauld could only be accessed by a Black. She had known that once Lupin learned of Sirius's innocence, he would want to somehow help his friend.

It was only natural that Sirius's escape would be necessary.

Her scheme, however, was not a simple one, and too much of it relied on luck and circumstance for her to have any real confidence. But it provided their highest chance of success; her arithmantic formulas led to the same end-game time and time again. She left the table for the bedroom, retrieved her dirty beaded bag, and then reached deep within it for a black velvet pouch that shimmered from the number of protective charms cast over it.

Hermione placed the glass bottle contained within it on the table, its green liquid glinting in the sunlight. "I have an idea on how we can free Sirius. But we'll have to wait until the next full moon."

* * *

 **III**

* * *

The plan was a horrible one, and Remus had fought it for each of the twenty-seven days that had separated their first conversation and the next full moon. She- this Hermione Granger- had disappeared on him several times during that stretch, returning days or hours later with small changes and additions each time. One afternoon, she disapparated mid-sentence, her head bent curiously to the side as if hearing a distant call, and then returned half an hour later, covered in filth and smelling of something worse.

She had deposited a pile of glittering dragon scales and an unmarked wand on the table and then vanished again, not returning for three more days, this time with a bundle containing a traveling cloak, a dark blue jumper and three pairs of women's trousers. She had spent that afternoon smiling to herself while reading through one of the many books she ported around in that bottomless bag of hers, occasionally pausing to touch the clean fabric of her trousers, as if reminding herself of their existence.

Remus had known, from her first entrance into his house, that the teenager had gone through some sort of ordeal- a survival she was markedly reluctantly to provide finer detail on. She never sat with her back to him, or the door, and her wand rested within her grasp at all times. It was only when she read that he could study her without being noticed.

He quickly found it too easy to lose himself in those moments, a deep mix of curiosity and concern forcing him to pay too much mind to the line of her jaw or the youthful curve of her throat.

The Wolfsbane potion, so aptly named, burned when he swallowed it that first day. She hovered over him, offering packets of Muggle crackers and sparkling water to offset the wretched nausea that soon followed. The second day brought with it a fever, and the broth she fed him tasted better than anything he'd had in years. By the final morning, the potion's side effects coupled with the usual full moon symptoms left him on a thin edge of irritability.

He'd snapped and apologized at least four times already, which she accepted with solemn smiles and pointed reviews of that evening's plan.

Meer hours before moonrise, as they were only halfway across the inlet that separated the coast from the fortress island, Remus tried again to convince her otherwise.

"You don't know that the potion will work. Let's at least test it this month and then try again next month, if it works." He braced himself against the wide planked seat of the small skiff that now cut a direct line through the dark waters.

She glared from inside her tightly drawn cloak. "The potion is fine, and you'll be fine. I'm in no danger from you tonight. You'll transform, enter the prison, find Sirius, and then return to me before dawn. We'll be out and on the boat before any of the alarms can sound.

"Besides," she added, voice softening, "I only have a limited amount. The person who made it- I'm not sure he knows how to yet in this present."

He still didn't know what to make of her lack of concern regarding his werewolf status. Her casual acceptance of his condition, along with her ongoing willingness to be near him, were rare reactions. "It's just not safe, Hermione."

"We haven't any other choice, and I'm far more worried about how the Dementors will react than you, anyway." She adjusted the rudder slightly with a slight jerk of her wand, and they moved out from under the wind and closer to the jutting iron sides of the prison island. "As a dark creature, they should leave you alone, in theory, but-"

A gust drew a heavy wave of dark, icy water over the lip of the skiff, drenching them both. Even with the casting of two successive drying spells, she continued to shiver. Careful to not jostle the ship's balance, he crept to sit by her side, extending his cloak over her shoulders. "This close to the change, I hardly need the extra warmth," he said by way of explanation.

She smiled wanly and wrapped the cloak more tightly around her. With her wand's precise movements, she directed the ship toward the single beach used for access. The effects of the island's guards only grew more potent as they neared, and while the moon's nearness offered him a slight buffer against the thick depression, his companion's shivering deepened.

Ignoring the way she flinched at his touch, he pulled her to his side from beneath the cloak. "Do you know how to conjure a patronus?" he asked.

Teeth chattering, she nodded. "You taught Harry during our third year, and he later taught me."

"If something goes wrong, will you be able to cast it?"

He felt the press of her cold hand along his arm, searching for his palm and then fingers before finding purchase. "I'll be alright, professor. Focus on you and Sirius, and I'll handle the rest, I promise."

All too soon, the boat met the shallow shore line. The sky overhead, cloudless and brilliant with its rising moon, crept closer to the full hour of his change. Remus left her, quieted by the rush of wave and brine, and raced for the long stone steps that led up and into the iron walls. He looked back once, as he felt his shoulders begin to fold and his knees snap, to see her watching, a dark slender figure in the moonlight.

The clouds shifted, the sky sudden and bright with the moon, and he was his other self again, full, complete, and inhuman.

* * *

 **IV**

* * *

He faded back to life, returning to the part of his mind that identified as man and not animal, and shuddered in the drowning cold. He centered on the things that had no emotion to steal or draw from: the hard soil floor under his cheek; the grit of dirt and stone along his fingers; the dry length of his tongue along his teeth. He touched his ear, tested its shape, and in this, he recalled himself.

His canine mind was the safe mind, but that was another form of madness, a long slope to the same blackness and loss of self as that of the Dementors. There were mornings- or at least nights of greater brightness- that he stirred from sleep having forgotten if he was man or dog. He had a name, he was certain, a name that he took pride in, stood strong in.

If he thought hard enough, willing the thoughts to only those without connection to his heart, he could remember the sound of the words spoken by another's mouth. But that was a thought that brought joy, and his guards were greedy and exacting in their theft.

He shifted along the floor, never leaving its security, until he scraped against the wet, chilled wall. He drew his mouth along the stone there, tasting the water, relishing in the salt of it, and then squashed even that small scrap of feeling. He wondered, as his tongue traced over his teeth, as his bare toes dug into the floor, if he was mad.

He reminded himself: once, he had a name.

He heard the sound distantly, as if through deep, deep water, a sort of whining, and then a high, echoing howl. He pressed his lips to the wall once more, and a second howl sent a vibration through the stone. He felt it first along his cheek, a chasmic tremor that stung his skin and strummed along his bones. A third, quaking howl filled the chamber, nearer now, and in it, he heard the familiar song of a childhood from long, long ago.

He muted his thoughts, however weakly gathered, to a stuttering silence, concentrating only on the realness of his now padded feet, the warmth of his thick fur, and the echoing call that spoke a language he could only dimly retrace. He ran, his legs stretching farther than they had in weeks and months and years, upward.

He thought only of the floor, its flatness and cool expanse; he considered only the air, lighter and filled with a separate reminder of things long forgotten and pushed to the deepest part of his mind. He emerged to a brightness not witnessed in years, and without his direction, he felt his body return, his legs expanding and his skin struck by the press of thin grass and the night dew.

He felt the press of a different darkness, rising from the depths behind him, and it was with a part of his mind that existed in non-thought and non-instruction that he pushed up from the ground, upright and tall, and ran once more. His bare feet pounded the earth, and he ignored the joy that bubbled from the warm contact. His eyes drank in the lightning horizon, colors he only now recalled the name for, blanketing in from the east.

A voice he didn't recognize, using words he hadn't heard in a lifetime, forced him to turn down again, his feet slick and unsure on the stone steps. He saw the sea first, tasted it on his lips, and then fell into the waiting boat. Wood under his hands, salt on his cheeks. The unknown voice continued to ring, patches of comprehension making way to him past a thickened numbness built on survival and desperation.

A heavy warmth crashed next to him, and his eyes finally saw beyond the dim and gauzed existence of the prison. Disjointed jaws, dripping with hot saliva and stretched in silent agony; thick, furred legs breaking and reforming into paler limbs; dark water, teeming and full bodied; a mast, tall and looming; a girl, hair long and tumbled. The sea bucked, and he felt something within his breast stir, foreign and nearly forgotten.

The girl leaned down, her voice soft and unheard; his eyes closed at the feel of her hair on his cheek. She draped a cloak over the naked, unconscious form beside him. She peered into his features, her dark eyes alight with a grim joy. Her lips moved, shaping the same words a second time.

He heard nothing of it, his ears deaf still to this sudden change in reality. Behind her, though, he saw the glimmering cloud, a ink stain stretching across the horizon. He felt the deadening nearness of it, the cacophonous drowning of the Dementors' nearing. He trembled and grasped at the water and strove to remember an emotion- any emotion- before the cloud reached him.

Her hand was at his cheek, her lips parted again in sound. He blinked and stared, knowing the movements, believing the stretches and curves to be words that he dearly longed for.

The air sizzled and popped, the pressure dropping drastically, as the cloud converged, the glimmers separating into hollowed faces and billowing cloaks. The girl's own cloak was torn from her shoulders as she clung to the mast, her face pale and blank as her eyes shut tightly. He felt his throat stir, his tongue shift, as words sprung from his lips, hoarse and dry and unused.

"Get down!" he called, the verberations harsh and unpractised. "Quick now!"

Her eyes re-opened, her gaze focused past his shoulder and into the wave of the Dementors. Her lips parted, spreading and stretching into a blazing expression of extant happiness. An unshared vision enshrouded her, and with a shout that the wind caught and carried beyond her, she lifted her wand. A brilliant glow flooded from its tip, growing and expanding, transforming into an animal that sparked with love and joy. The patronus flipped and dove, burrowing below the water and then careening into the blackness with abandon. A stark brilliance enveloped the Dementors, its brightness cresting and crashing into an explosive corona that swept all in its influence with an overwhelming exultation.

The ship teetered in the collision's wake, the broken mast tipping dangerously portside, and with a crack, his skull met the wooden planking. His vision faded, and the girl disappeared from his eyes in a halo of sudden dawn.

When he awoke, the ship and sea were vanished. The softness under his hands and beneath his back had no definition, no meaning at first. He touched the fabric of the blanket, felt its weathered dearness and fought back the rush of unbidden tears. The girl was there, and behind her a man whose face he knew. He stared without understanding.

The girl knelt beside him, a glass brimming with water held to his lips. When she spoke, he finally heard.

"Drink Sirius; you're safe now."

The water was cool, and in it a taste he had forgotten.


	3. The Diary and the Locket: Part Two

**Entanglement**

 _ **by: carpetfibers**_

 **The Diary and the Locket**

 **Part Two**

 **I**

Hermione had thought, given the shorter time in the prison, that Sirius Black might be more of the person spoken of in stories from his Hogwarts years: brave, charming, clever and loyal- that the man she remembered- reckless, selfish and regularly drunk- was due to the years under dementor watch, isolated and driven to near madness. She had thought, when planning during those months on the run, starving in the cold, and imagining a bettered future- she had thought, surely, Sirius Black would be the man she needed him to be.

She had thought wrong.

She flinched as the sound of breaking glass echoed up from the basement, followed by the muffled shouts of the enraged man. Lupin had resorted to physically binding Sirius in the basement to prevent the wizard from trying to leave yet again, intent on finding and killing Peter Pettigrew as quickly as possible. Sirius had raged all through the night, and the brightening of the morning sky had done little to soften his wrath. She heard Lupin's softer tones attempt to reply, but a combination of guilt and a history built on giving sway to his friend's stronger personality could do little to cull Sirius's fervor.

Hermione took the stairs carefully, listening more closely as their words came into better focus.

"-trust her, Moony? A young girl shows up and tells you some story about time travel, and you just accept it?"

"It does sound fantastic, Pads, I know, but she knows things about me- about _you_ \- that only James or Peter-"

"Don't mention his name!"

"All right, all right-"

"But you're not wrong. James is dead, and that _rat_ is not. Is it not more likely that _he_ fed her this information, to trick you into trusting her? And you did just that, didn't you? You've always been weak toward women, and _he_ would know that- would know to send a young, pretty thing to tempt your weakness and play upon your feelings, and so easily you just took in a Death Eater's _whore-_ "

"Peter Pettigrew did not send me." Hermione stepped down from the stair and into the patterned light from the basement's sole, gauzy window. Lupin glanced away, his lips down-turned, but Sirius faced her directly, his hard gaze greedy as it swept over her smaller frame, judging and accounting. "No one sent me."

"Time-turners can't go back years-"

"I didn't use a time-turner." Involuntarily, she clasped her still bandaged wrist, the wound having re-opened twice in the past month despite efforts to prevent otherwise. "There are spells that do much the same as a time-turner, but with a different cost. I weighed my options, and-" she paused, a stab of pain cinching along her brow causing her words to stutter, before fading away, "-and this was the best choice."

"Dark magic," Sirius spat at her.

She drew closer, near enough that the chain connected to the wall would not prevent him from violence if he so chose. She hadn't liked the Sirius from her past as much as Harry did; she wasn't clouded by the desperate love her best friend had had for his godfather. She had seen the kind of selfish and short-sighted man he was, but she had also known his deep unhappiness and helplessness. He'd been a Gryffindor once, loyal and brave, and she needed that part of him to return if they were to be successful.

"Is it dark magic if it's done with love?" She watched as his expression stilled, the anger and distrust melding into something harder. She couldn't place the emotion that twisted his lips, but his grey eyes cleared, madness and fury emptying from their gaze.

"Sirius, you should listen to her story." She felt Lupin's hand on her shoulder, his touch reassuring. "Make up your mind after."

And so Hermione recounted again the details of the future she hoped to undo, the truth her third year at Hogwarts had uncovered, and the tragic fate that followed. She could not meet Sirius's eyes when she spoke of the Department of Mysteries, of how his cousin had bested him, and of his slow descent behind the Veil. Her words fell flatly, her emotions hardened to them, until she neared the end of her story, of Harry's death and those dark months spent on the run. She could hear the howls of the spectral hounds again, feel their hot breath on her neck, the promise of their teeth in her throat.

She felt her stomach turn, and with a brief apology, she ran back for the stairs, to the small toilette where she bent over the commode, her meal from the prior night promptly lost. Hermione waited there, curled against the wall, until both her stomach and head finished spinning. She hoped Sirius would believe her, just enough to adhere to the plan at least. Without him, their chances of getting the diary or the locket would be much less.

She heard the murmur of voices from beyond the toilette door and weakly stood up, rinsing her mouth with water and splashing her cheeks with more of it. The mirror showed an only slightly improved face from the month prior. Regular meals and a warm bed had returned some of the color to her cheeks and removed the shadows from under her eyes. But still, the expression in her gaze disturbed her, and she could only look for so long before shuddering away.

The opened door revealed that Lupin had released Sirius from the chains; he sat, using his hands to scoop in mouthfuls of rice and beef, eating much as she imagined she must have those first few days after her arrival. He gave no pause at her entrance, his eyes flickering the once to her face and then back to his meal. Lupin offered her the other chair, but she aimed instead for the side of the counter, preferring still to position herself for the quickest departure.

Constant vigilance, as Moody would have said. Not that it'd done any good, not for him, in the end.

"There's been no news, yet, of Sirius's escape, at least not from The Daily Prophet," Lupin gestured toward the opened paper, its front page strewn with a large story on Minister Fudge's latest monument unveiling. Hermione eyed the familiar statue, the heroic wizard and cowering magickfolk, with revulsion.

"It won't be long before the Aurors show up here, you know. You'll be one of their first stops." She sighed, an echo of her earlier headache tracing along her scalp. "We should get the diary first, and then relocate to Grimmauld."

"No!" Sirius slammed the emptied bowl down hard enough to crack it, and with a patience that spoke of habit, Lupin repaired it with a silent flick of his wand. "I'm not going back there."

"It's empty, unplottable, and its ownership fell to you after your mother died last year. Give me one good reason we shouldn't use it." She waited, knowing that he hated her in that moment.

"Sirius, I know how you feel," Lupin broke in gently. Much as he done earlier for her, he placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. The soft gesture sent a tremble through the man. "But it serves a purpose. We'll only stay long enough to find the horcruxes and secure your innocence."

The tremble grew into a full shudder, and Sirius stood abruptly, shaking off his friend's hand. "That elf of hers will be there."

"Kreacher," Hermione supplied, and the part of her that had hardened, solidified into stone, felt a slight tremor at how easily she could dismiss the pathetic creature's existence. "He isn't to be trusted; he'll betray you as soon as anyone with the slightest Black blood wanders close enough to catch his attention."

She caught Lupin's gaze, surprised by the concern leveled at her, and held it for a moment more before returning to study her hands. "Besides, he'll not take kindly to our presence."

Sirius's jaw tightened in assent, the curt nod of his head his only sign of agreement before he made for the basement stair. Hermione waited until his back disappeared into the door frame before exhaling, the taut energy that had held her stiff and controlled weakening.

"Are you alright?" Lupin asked.

"Yes, thank you." She managed a wan smile before reaching for the emptied bowl and making for the sink, preferring to keep her hands busy and occupied."It's strange, really, how little has changed. He never cared for me much- before, that is. I think I always annoyed him a bit."

"You were, what, thirteen then?"

She remembered seeing Sirius's picture in the Prophet, watching as the starved and dirtied man screamed and raged in the photograph. How much had he must have felt for the magic to have captured so strong of an emotion... Perhaps the longer time in Azkaban had lessened some of that anger in her timeline. Perhaps, having freed him sooner, the passion here was stronger, more potent.

"Yes. I actually think I quite surprised him. I remember how shocked he had seemed when I called him Mr. Black."

Lupin laughed, his eyes brightening briefly before clouding back over, his attention returning to the basement. "We must be patient with him, Hermione. I've only been in Azkaban once, but it's an awful place. He's been there for five years; we can't expect him to be recovered after a few nights."

She shook the bowl slowly and placed it on the rack before twisting around. She considered the younger form of her once professor; the concern that laced his features was unchanged in the future, and Hermione felt a twist in her chest, a stab of memory that recalled the faces who had known it with her. "He's lucky to have you, you know."

When she touched his hand, a light pause meant more for his comfort than hers, she was surprised by the warmth of his fingers as they returned the kindness. Tears prickled, and with a few quick steps, she separated herself from him and brought the table as a safe space between. She avoided his gaze and instead reached for her beaded bag.

Another velvet pouch was retrieved, and the potion within it shone dully, thick and murky. The stasis charm was as stubborn as its caster, and Hermione smiled grimly. "Do you think you could come up with a reason to visit the Ministry? We're going to need a donor."

 **II**

Remus had wandered the main floors at the Ministry for hours, pretending at having been sent first from one department to another, a thick stack of parchment kept as a prop in his hands. It was on the fifth floor that he finally ran into a likely candidate, a distant cousin of Sirius's named Marius Crouch who was loudly, and with a slight slur, complaining about a recent tariff imposed by Lithuania on its Veela brandy. Remus had pretended clumsiness, and in the disarray of his parchment and Crouch, stole the needed hair samples.

Sirius had watched as their house guest decanted a small portion of the polyjuice before adding the hairs in a practiced motion. Remus had thought nothing of an eighteen-year-old girl being well versed in a potion that was generally reserved for spy use, but Sirius added the display to the growing list of reasons to not trust her. If his friend couldn't see the dangers inherent with her arrival in their lives, then it would have to be up to him. He had noticed, with satisfaction, that she seemed to dislike his constant study of her, and he made a point of never allowing her to be alone.

She tried to leave once, while waiting for the date of the party to near, claiming an errand, but Sirius had insisted on accompanying her. He'd trotted along, in animagus form, growling for most of the trip, as she slunk into one of Knockturn Alley's seedier apothecaries. She used the purchased elixir to secure another dosing of the strange green potion that allowed Remus to keep his mind during his transformation. Remus had presented this fact as another reason to trust her, but Sirius had grown up in a family of Slytherins, and manipulation was a ploy he was well familiar with.

Securing invitations to the party had been another obstacle she offered to handle singly, and once again, Sirius insisted on joining her. Approaching Marius Crouch under the guise of an elvish wine broker had been clever, and she had done something to smarten her usual level of dress and appearance enough that the wizard had allowed his house elves to grant them entrance. Sirius had watched, in his altered form, as she smiled and flattered and brightened in a way he hadn't witnessed before.

For a brief moment, he was reminded of her age and youth; she should still have been in a school uniform, not charming a red-nosed Pureblood who spent half the meeting ogling her knees.

In his musings, he missed the moment when she knicked the invitation. It was a fairly exclusive event, held at Malfoy Manor, but hosted by the Crabbes. The manor's actual owners were still maintaining a semblance of social isolation, in the middle of a grand circuit of their various estates on the Continent. The Crouches, even the more embarrassing members, were guaranteed an invite by name alone, a fact Sirius had vouched for and the girl blankly accepted.

The samples of elvish wine she left behind were all heavily spiked with sleeping potions, and considering Crouch's eagerness to begin his exploration of the vintage, even before they left, Sirius felt confident that the wizard would sleep straight through whatever plans he might have had for the party. She remained silent during their return, touching only his sleeve during the disapparation. The remainder of the afternoon was spent on preparing for the party.

Remus chatted with her lightly, eliciting the occasional smile as he helped the girl with the needed glamours for her appearance. Sirius watched, quickly dressed, from the kitchen, as his friend casually touched her shoulder and hand, a slight tap on her nose as aid in changing its shape. An hour before the party, Sirius rose and downed the potion. He felt his body bend, his skin stretching and widening. The sensation was painless, but drawn out far longer than his animagus transformations; it left his scalp itching and his tongue numb.

That she knew where to apparate to was another reason Sirius found to not trust her.

 **III**

Malfoy Manor's grand hall shared the same marble mantle pieces and ornate chandeliers of the smaller drawing room. Two massive fireplaces, the span of which stretched beyond his arms twice held aloft, centered the back wall, while floor-to-ceiling portraits decorated the wall opposite. It reminded him of his grandparents' summer home, with duplicates of many of the same paintings on its walls. Grandmother Melania had been kind, he remembered, with soft brown hair and wide gray eyes.

Whenever she laughed, his father had smiled, a happiness the man never shared at home filling his eyes. The only reason Sirius had known his father was unhappy was because of those rare moments spent at his grandparents' home.

He drank too deeply from his wine goblet and ignored the disapproval shot his way from his companion. She hadn't needed polyjuice for the party, relying instead on a few charms to change her hair color to a milky blond, straightening the lengths to a long curtain that she parted baldly and left running down her back. She'd done something with her nose, narrowing it, and her eyes had lightened as well. The effect bothered him in a way he didn't understand, but nearly everything bothered him now, and for not the first time that evening, Sirius fought the desperate urge to run.

It was madness being here, in the house of Death Eaters, surrounded by yet more Death Eaters, but it was a madness he had agreed to.

"Calm yourself, _Jean_ ," he said, pitching his voice so only her ears could hear. "It's a party, and no one's going to believe that Marius Crouch would skip on the opportunity to get pissed."

"Forgive me if I don't share your faith in your tolerance. Prior experience has shown me that you don't exactly have a limit."

He scowled and clutched the goblet more closely; another thing he could add to his internal list of things he did not like about the strange girl. She acted as if she knew him, and in that knowledge, she showed little other than regular disdain and a marked anticipation for failure. "As you're stuck with me, I guess you'll just have to deal with it."

She turned to reply, her charmed features twisted in annoyance, when something caught her attention from across the room. In a second, she returned to the calm professional he also found himself disliking. "Come on, that's the hall that leads to the library."

She tugged on his elbow, spilling his wine, and Sirius noticed that far too quickly they were drawing the attention of the room's company. The last thing either of them needed was for someone to look too closely at his disguise as Marius Crouch, an infamous drunk and only son of Charis Black and Caspar Crouch. Improvising, he grabbed Hermione's hand and led her into the dance floor.

"What're you doing?" she hissed. Ignoring her pique, he tried to remember the proper count for the rondelle.

"Give it a minute- you were being far too obvious."

Her eyes rapidly darkened, an expression he understood too well clouding her gaze. Sirius followed the turn and mentally congratulated himself when he managed to not catch her toes in the difficult spin. "They'll forget it in a moment. From what I remember, it never took much to get Marius drunk. It'll be an afterthought before the song is even over."

A bit of the fear seemed to lift from her, and carefully, he adjusted her hand on his shoulder, shifting it to the right placement for the dance; the strangeness of physical touch still left him far too breathless. That he barely knew her hardly helped; his skin crawled, and beneath his chest, his heart raced. Sweat beaded along his back, and with intent, he tightened his grip on her waist, swallowing down the irrational panic.

A couple passed him, and he recognized the woman as a third or fourth cousin. Another nodded in greeting, and he was careful to only barely curl his lip in return.

"Thanks," she said, after another difficult spin. "I didn't think I'd be so affected, coming here, but-"

"Another adventure?" he prompted, more curious than he cared to admit.

Her laugh was brief and low, and he felt her nails curl into his shoulder. "Not an adventure-" she drew herself short, cutting off her words with a terse turn of her lips. "The library is our objective. Any chance people would believe Marius would be interested in browsing the shelves?"

"Unlikely. Blacked out on one of its couches, maybe, but to read?" He considered the hall door; only a handful of guests lingered near its entrance, but it was still enough of an audience that a plausible excuse would be needed.

"I suppose there's nothing for it then…" Hermione looked up, and for a moment her glamour flickered, and Sirius caught sight of a different sort of trepidation in her gaze. "You'll need to make a pass at me then."

He missed the count, and she used his stumble as a chance to slip his hand further along her back, sliding into his embrace. "Pretend to smell my hair or something," she suggested, cheeks aflame for all that her voice remained cool.

Sirius lowered his nose to her throat and felt another wave of panic tremor along his spine. He could well recall the last time he was this close to another person, and it had been a faceless Auror at the time, whose hands had been focused on checking Sirius's robes for hidden weapons. The wizard had smelled of perspiration and tobacco; her skin smelled like eucalyptus, like the oil Remus kept in his shower in lieu of proper shampoo. It filled his nostrils, and dizzily, he swayed into her, feeling the ghost-like graze of her skin on his cheek as his brow fell to her shoulder.

He heard the brief sound of her artificial titter and then her voice, pitched to be overheard: "Oh Marius, not in public!"

It was all too easy to let her guide him toward the hall, to pretend a deep interest in the scent of her throat and the feel of her dress robes along his flushed skin. Sirius spun again when she suddenly slipped out from under him. He straightened and blinked, taking in her heated cheeks and the studious way in which she avoided his gaze.

"You handled that well," Hermione said, after a moment.

"I've always been quite the actor," he answered, wishing for more of the wine to dull the strange buzzing clouding his thoughts.

He saw the dip of her shoulders in the dim lighting, and when she turned to face him, her gaze was once again controlled. In a voice laced with her earlier disapproval, she pointed down the hall. "Oh, I know. After you, please?"

Sirius took the lead, her words dampening the headiness in a way his own attempts hadn't been able to. She guided him, her voice low, through the hall and past two more doorways, to a large paneled double-frame. An iron fixture, modeled after a sleeping peacock, guarded the lock, and once again at Hermione's prompting, Sirius lowered his palm to it. Its iron eyes blinked vaguely into awareness, and as his blood registered against the wards, the peacock's feathers parted to open the doors.

Hermione pushed past him, a whispered current of what sounded like Greek passing her lips and setting her wand aglow. Her hushed chanting continued until the glow of her wand broke into a sputtering staccato at the fourth bookcase from the front. She doused the wand and reached for a nondescript book on the second shelf before pausing. She glanced back to where Sirius stood, her brow furrowed.

"I don't think I should touch it."

"But it's safe if _I_ do?"

"Well-" and she hesitated, something like shame touched her lips. "I'm a Muggleborn, you see, and this was _his_ first. The only other people to touch it were all Purebloods, so-"

He understood, truly, but something of her effect on him in the dancehall forced him to pretend at an anger he didn't have. "And that's what I'm here for, after all, right? My _blood_?"

She winced, but didn't attempt to argue otherwise. Steeling his jaw, Sirius grabbed the book, and feeling nothing spark in response, tucked it into an inner pocket on his dress robes. He didn't spare her a glance, heading back for the entry and what he hoped was another glass of wine before they could make their final escape.

He turned, expecting her behind him, but instead caught the edge of her gown as she tucked behind another of the bookcases. Seconds later, she walked back into view, her hands pressing down the creases in her skirts. Her movements were quick, but his eyes caught the tale-tell outline of a book before her fingers could smooth the bulge out.

Sirius's eyes narrowed; Remus be damned. He couldn't trust her, and until he forced every last secret from her, he would remain wary. Careful to avoid touching her, he swept past her in the hall, retracing their steps. He made a point of adjusting his robes as he re-entered the dance hall, and relished the embarrassed flush that filled Hermione's cheeks when more than one party goer graced them with knowing glances.

He took a small pleasure in drinking another two glasses of wine before finally agreeing to leave.

 **IV**

Being both a half blood and a werewolf had been grounds enough for the Blacks to never extend him an invitation during those years when Sirius was still part of the Family Tree and not a blasted spot. For all that Sirius loved to talk, he rarely shared details from his home. Remus had known his friend was unhappy and that Walpurga Black held little love for her disappointment of an eldest son. There had been bruises along Sirius's neck at the beginning of their second year, and a broken arm at the start of their fourth.

Remus hadn't asked, but he spent much of his free time that fourth year reading books on healing spells and talismans. The iron amulets he gave his friends before separating for summer had been imbued with various runic spells, but Sirius's had been especially layered with charms for healing, bone strength, and deep sleep. It took most of Remus's fifth year to build up enough magical stores to properly craft a talisman, and Sirius had sworn it was the twisted piece of metal that had saved his life the night he finally left Number 12 Grimmauld Place.

James had written of Sirius's bloodied body falling through the Floo, a deep gash running from his shoulder to hip, and an oozing curse that left Sirius screaming in pain whenever touched. James's mother, a Black herself, had recognized the spell, and it was only her skill in potions that had driven the dark magic from Sirius's skin. The scar remained, though, a thin crooked gorge that tore through his unblemished chest.

Sirius got his first tattoo that year, taking Remus's amulets and painstakingly tracing them into his flesh with a bespelled blade. The tattoos were a gray sort of magic, not quite dark, but certainly not white, and their existence on his skin had been used as evidence of his Death Eater membership.

" _Let's not forget who else uses tattoos on skin!"_ Remus remembered the Daily Prophet writing.

Remus watched, now, the three of them gathered in the mouldering kitchen at 12 Grimmauld Place, as Sirius rubbed that same spot, his eyes red and voice thick with anger.

The thin diary sat on the table, its occupied space the only section not covered in a film of dust and disuse. At the table's base, near the open archway, motionless and silent, laid a bound house elf. Remus avoided looking at the pathetic creature, his stomach still turned by Sirius's sudden and vicious violence when the house elf first greeted them.

" _Blood traitor! Werewolf filth!"_ The wizened and gnarled Kreacher had howled at their sudden entrance, his large eyes looming with a feverish glee. When Hermione stepped up behind them, sealing the door in their wake, the elf shuddered in revulsion. " _You would dare- a Mudblood!"_

Sirius's wand cut with loud sparks, and it was with wrathful hands that he plucked the still body and threw it down the short flight of stairs that led to the basement kitchen.

Hermione blinked rapidly, her fingers plucking at her wrapped wrist. Remus's eyes traced the brief snatch of skin from above the bandage; he had only seen the scar the once, after she first forced her way into his home, but he knew the shape and length of the letters.

It had been that carved word, scarred into her pale skin, that had convinced him to give her a chance, to wait for her to wake and ask his questions.

"Save your sympathies for better," Sirius muttered. "He'll wake soon enough."

"I-" Hermione shook her head, biting back her words. "Never mind. The locket should be here- he kept a den in the back cupboard."

She led them around the heavy table and back behind the ash-filled fireplace. Soot and charred remnants from a year-old fire littered the hearth. She reached for a small handle, nearly hidden in the gloom, and opened the clotted cubby hole. Pieces of black silk that might have once made up a dress robe, a cracked cane, a torn half of a third year charms primer- litter and debris filled the cupboard.

Abruptly, she straightened, pushing her way roughly from between them. "It's silver with a gold center and a green S. Be careful not to touch it."

Sirius crouched to take her place, poking gingerly through the refuse with a disgusted curl to his lips. Remus stared out after Hermione as she slipped back through the doorway, stumbling briefly as she stepped over Kreacher's prone form. "It's easy to forget that she's still so young."

"And it's her age that makes you far too careless, Moony." Sirius leaned further into the cubby. "You shouldn't trust her."

"She's the reason you're out of Azkaban, Sirius. She's done nothing to deserve the way you treat her. All she's done is help you." He couldn't understand his friend's continued suspicion.

Sirius's gray eyes met his briefly, a stubborn glint to them. "The wards she used to reset our entrance? Those were _Black_ wards."

"She used to live here, more than likely she was taught-"

"I can't believe that I'd fall enough that I'd teach a kid how to make blood wards. Black wards are not _Light_. She didn't even blink."

"There's a reasonable explanation, I'm certain of it." He wondered if Sirius knew about her scar- he wondered if that would be enough to convince him away from his distrust.

With a grunt, Sirius stood up, the tip of his wand dipped by the extra weight of a thick chain hanging from it. Gingerly, he carried the locket over to the table and let it slip out to sit next to the diary. Unlike the book, which had displayed nothing beyond an unprepossessing stillness, the locket released a slick chill. Remus felt a faint whisper of it, a hushed call that found his hand lifting from his side unconsciously.

"The truth is that you're weak against it, friend- you've always been weak against it."

His stomach clenched, and unbidden, he thought of her as she stood above him, fresh from that first shower, her hair damp and dark. He'd felt the wet of her hair touch his cheek, felt the warmth of her skin near his neck. "She's just a kid-"

"Not that." Sirius shook his head and backed away from the table. "She knows you're a werewolf and doesn't care. That's all it's ever taken for you to forget your sense."

For a moment, Remus considered it. He let his thoughts run through the doubts, trace through the possibilities. There was a chance Sirius was right, and if he was right, then perhaps these horcruxes- this hunt she had them helping her with- were to serve a very different end than what she had described. Perhaps she wanted their power for something more personal. Had he even attempted to check her story? She mentioned Muggle parents- he could find them in a directory and at least confirm their existence- _her_ existence.

And then there was her continued refusal to brook the aid of Albus Dumbledore; she'd insisted that they not include him, and even though it was only in this single instance that Sirius seemed to agree, Remus could not understand why they wouldn't want the help of the powerful wizard. Dumbledore had been the first to truly offer him a home, a chance at normalcy and friends- the dark distrust Hermione had for the wizard did not rest well with him.

There were sound reasons to have doubts, Remus agreed, and yet-

The letters had been traced more than once. The blade that had torn through her forearm had repeated the word at least twice. The pain would have been tremendous- and the hate that it must have taken to carve the letters so carefully even more so. He knew what it was to be reviled, and he knew with a certainty the sort of person that feeling creates.

Her acceptance of his lycanthropy was not subterfuge but an honest kindness.

"You're not wrong," Remus admitted, lifting his eyes and meeting his friend's hard gaze. "But that doesn't make you right."

His friend had no reply, and in equal silence, they left the kitchen, Sirius pausing long enough to spell Kreacher's unconscious body back up the stair and to a shuttered room on the second floor. Remus followed the path of flickering light on the ground floor that led to what must have been the Black library. Hermione had lit the hearth, and she sat in a tumble before the fire, a blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders.

When she failed to notice his entry, he lingered, considering the bow of her head and the shadow that curved along her cheeks. Her mouth rested slightly parted, and one of her slender fingers traced the lower lip; the gesture, surely unconscious and without guile, sent a shivering thrill along his spine. A dark rush of something leaner than mere admiration coiled beneath his chest, and too keenly, Remus realized that whatever the basis of his feelings were for her, whether it be an empathy or understanding, or a weakness of her easy acceptance-

In the fire light, he only saw a woman, and in her warmth and shadow, he began to want.

.


End file.
